Monday, 29 April 2013

Richard Wright's ceiling murals at The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

After a ten
year renovation held up by delays, the Netherlands’ Rijksmuseum (National
Museum) has unveiled a site specific commission from the British Turner
Prize winner, Richard Wright, comprising two painted ceilings each measuring
nine metres squared in two vestibules leading to the museum’s most prized work,
Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’.

Commissioned by the curator Theo Tegelaers as part of a programme
of works titled ‘A Contemporary View of the Rijksmuseum’ enlisting artists to
explore the museum’s collections and role in national life during the
building’s redesign, Wright’s ceilings are the only project that will survive
into the foreseeable future. Having spent six years as young artist living in
Amsterdam and visiting the museum, Wright was largely inspired by the
architectural features of the building particularly the brickwork rather than
the restored murals that line the Hall of Honour leading to the ‘Nightwatch’.
‘We worked by consulting with the architects about potential spaces in the
museum for Richard to use for a permanent work. The two spaces were chosen
because they were not specific exhibition galleries but took their cue from the
building in that they offer an orientation for visitors as a hub between
various displays. Richard works like that by reflecting and thinking about the
site.’ The ceilings depart from Wright’s usual practice of installing temporal
work with a limited lifespan. While Wright accepts that it is impossible to
anticipate priorities for the museum in the future, the ceiling murals were
commissioned as a lasting intervention in the fabric of the re-designed and
restored building.

The project took seven weeks for Wright and four assistants
lying on top of scaffolds to draw and paint over 47,000 individual black stars
of varying sizes that spread across the entire ceilings of each space
expressing the architectural dimension of each room, unusual in the building
for not being vaulted. The paintings were first designed and then transferred
to the plaster by hand with chalk. Despite the large number of individual stars
the work is subtle and restrained so that it is easy for visitors to pass below
without necessarily noticing the technical virtuosity and hours of labour
involved.

‘The work has a timelessness engendered by the way it unites
painting with graphic and typographical pictorial elements’ says Tegelaers
explaining the nuanced quality of the commission. ‘ It has a kinship with and
is reminiscent of Renaissance murals, motifs from ‘still life’ in classical
painting and the organic design idiom of Jungenstil, but it also embraces
elements from contemporary subcultures like Goth and Punk’.

Richard Wright in the accompanying catalogue suggests that ‘the
base material is time. The painting is made of this and it remembers. To me
this gives the work a very specific material quality.’

Other works made for ‘A Contemporary View’ during the
museum’s closure included Simon Starling’s ‘Drop Sculpture’ 2006-2008 when he cast
three copies of the 17th century original model of the figure of
Atlas on Amsterdam’s Royal Palace, which he then dropped and re-assembled and
exhibited in an enquiry into authenticity and restoration. Dutch artist Fiona
Tan photographed friends and acquaintances in the style of ‘Golden Age’
portraits belonging to the Rijkmuseum’s collection in a work titled
‘Provenance’ 2008 linking Dutch faces from the past with the present. Germain
Kruip’s ‘Rehearsal’ between 2005 and 2006 slowly illuminated the empty shell of
the museum building with a breath- like pulse of light at night after the
removal of all the architectural accretions added over the years. On the opening weekend, Job Koelewijn choreographed a performance, ‘Carried
On Hands’ with 800 school children in the museum square producing four images of
paintings returned to public view in the restored building. This group will
therefore represent a new generation discovering the museum and its collections
after the long closure.

The Rijksmuseum has opened new galleries dedicated to
Twentieth Century art and design where objects will be used to weave Dutch
social and cultural history together but which also express the museum’s role as
an international institution welcoming visitors from around the world. The
curating mirrors the philosophy of the galleries displaying material from the
Dutch ‘Golden Age’. Architectural models, airport signs, film, furniture and an
aeroplane are exhibited alongside Modernist paintings from De Stijl and the
CoBrA movements, sculpture and photography as part of the museum’s mission to
explain Dutch historical trends and to enhance the Rijkmuseum’s role as a
unique museum in the world displaying artefacts from history, design and art.

The museum director Wim Pijbes claims that the renovation
works had produced a complete transformation of the museum as a building and collection.
The guiding philosophy of the restored museum is to instil a sense of time and
beauty. The Spanish architects Cruz y Ortiz
produced a winning proposal in the competition by advocating a new entrance to
the museum in a newly created basement hub stretching across the entire site
thereby allowing access under the public passageway running through the heart
of the building that the original architect Pierre Cuypers was compelled to
include to enlist the city’s consent. The old museum accommodated many such
compromises and these were cited by the director for making a compelling case
for stripping out numerous alterations to the original Cuyper’s design but at
the same time modernising and updating the facilities for the future.

‘The original
building of 1885 was not well received’ says Antonio Ortiz, the renovating
architect ‘because it resembled a Catholic Cathedral in the predominantly
Protestant Netherlands and many of the original decorations were subsequently
covered up. But the original building was conceived as ‘Gesamptkunstwerk’. Original
dimensions were altered in the 20th century and building had become
labyrinthine and sad. We have restored the original dimensions while adding
climate control, acoustics, fire precautions and new orientations to give the
institution a renewed life.’

One hundred new additions to the collection acquired during
the renovation include the Burgomeister of Delft and his Daughter by Jan Steen,
1655 and the Bend in The Herengracht by
Gerrit Berckheyde, 1672 . In bold move, the museum decided to exclude new
technologies within the galleries so that videos and digital displays are
absent. The only concession to cutting edge materials is the use of vitrines that
reduce light reflection. The museum will also make 125000 digital images
available for public use on its website in a conscious move to open up the
collections and to promote greater access without copyright restrictions.

About Me

I am a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in Modern and Contemporary art. I teach at Christie's Education, Sotheby's Institute and work freelance at the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery. I am also a reviewer for Flash Art magazine.This blog is a place to comment on art and visual culture in London and abroad. I Tweet @Joshuaswhite and Five Senses can be found at http://joshuasimonwhite.blogspot.co.uk

For any publishing projects or media appearances, I can be reached at joshua@joshuaswhite.com. Formerly, I was a founding editor of Metrobeat (now Citysearch), New York, the first listings guide to the city and subsequently the launch producer of the BBC Online homepage.